Five ways to miss the content marketing bus

There’s no doubt about it, the business world has woken up to marketing with valuable content as a way of attracting leads and boosting sales. But while everyone is talking about it, not everyone is getting it right.

Here are five ways we’ve seen businesses missing the content marketing bus:

1. No strategy.

Producing content left, right and centre might produce a lot of noise, but unless the content has a purpose it won’t get you very far. Businesses who win with content marketing have clear aims and objectives – new pieces of content build a library that tells a story demonstrates expertise in a niche. Scattergun content is a waste of time and effort. (See: 7 Steps to content marketing success.)

2. Not listening.

Creating content in a vacuum, without listening to clients and customers won’t get you out of the terminal. Content that answers your clients’ specific questions will get found and appreciated. If they’re not looking for it, how will they find it? (Does your website say the right things?)

3. Shoddy stuff.

Quality matters. The bar has been raised and just good enough isn’t good enough any more. Quality means well designed and well produced. Easy on the eye, and a joy to consume. (Find out: What makes quality content?)

4. Being boring.

If you want to grab attention your content can’t be dull. Brilliant content will lurk undiscovered beneath snoozesome headlines, the most amazing articles in the world might never be read if presented in unremitting slabs of web unfriendly fonts. And if you want to guarantee no one will ever read your blog, illustrate it with that jigsaw pieces image you’ve seen a 1000 times before. (Let me entertain you)

5. Not diversifying.

If all your content is written, you’re in danger of getting left out in the cold. Only write blogs? You’ve got to give video a go. Or podcasting. Experiment with infographics. Size up Slide Share. If you want your content to get picked up and shared, make it easy to consume in a variety of ways across a range of devices. If a sizeable chunk of your content is not mobile friendly, it will miss the bus. (Read: 50 shades of content)

Where have you seen content marketing miss the mark? And what’s the best example you’ve seen recently? We’d love to know.